LANGUAGE AND A PHYSICAL ORGANIZATION TECHNIQUE FOR SUMMARY TABLES.

Abstract

A summary table is a tabular representation of summary data, and is a useful data structure for statistical databases. Primitive summary tables are basic building blocks of summary tables, and can be represented as relations with set-valued attributes. In this paper, we propose a set of summary table manipulation operators that, together with an algebra of set-valued relations, form an algebraic language for manipulating set-valued relations and arbitrary summary tables. We then describe a physical organization technique for summary tables, and discuss an implementation for summary table operators utilizing this technique.